Cabling Installation & Maintenance – NBase-T Alliance forms to forge multi-gig over Cat 5e, Cat 6 cabling
On the heels of the introduction of AQrate technology that can deliver 2.5- and 5-Gbit/sec data rates over Category 5e and Category 6 cabling, four founding members announced the formation of the NBase-T Alliance on October 27. Cisco, Aquantia, Freescale and Xilinx are the alliance’s founders with a stated mission “to promote the development of 2.5- and 5-Gigabit Ethernet technology for enterprise infrastructure.
“The founding of the alliance aligns with market demand for a unified approach to the deployment of faster data rates on twisted-pair copper cables matching the bandwidth increase driven by 802.11ac Wave 2 wireless access points and other applications,” the alliance continued. It will promote this multi-gigabit capability across the industry, and eventually bring it into industry standards, said Chris Spain, Cisco’s vice president of product management. Spain added that efforts within standards bodies are in nascent stages.
